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🗺️ Places and Names of Aotearoa

Years 6 to 10 · Read up first

10 questions. Get 8 right to earn 10 minutes. All 10 right = +5 bonus. They start easy and get harder as you go, so treat the first few as a warm-up. Every one you miss comes back with the answer and why.

1. What does 'puke' mean in a Māori place name, as in Pukekohe?

HillRiverCoastCave

2. What does 'one' mean in a Māori place name, as in Ninety Mile Beach's Māori name?

RainSnowFireSand or beach

3. What does Rotorua's name mean?

Boiling waterSecond lakeLong harbourRed earth

4. What does Kaikōura's name literally describe?

Eating crayfishA high mountainA cold windA large island

5. Cape Reinga's Māori name, Te Rerenga Wairua, translates to roughly what?

The valley of echoesThe rock of the sunThe bay of many fishThe leaping off place of spirits

6. What is the connection between a region's name and the identity people in that region often feel?

Regional identity is unrelated to historyOnly English place names create any sense of local identityRegion names have no connection to identity at allRegional names, especially Māori ones tied to ancestors or landscape, are often a strong part of local identity and pride

7. What does the dual naming of places like Mount Aspiring, also called Tititea, generally reflect?

That a landscape can carry more than one name and more than one history, both worth knowingThat English names always came firstThat mountains never had Māori names before Europeans arrivedThat one of the two names must be wrong

8. Fox Glacier, in Westland, carries which Māori name?

Te Moeka o TuaweWhakatūPiopiotahiRakiura

9. Whanganui and Whangārei both begin with 'whanga'. What does this suggest about both places?

Both places have identical historiesBoth places are connected to a harbour or bayBoth places are on top of a mountainBoth places are named after the same ancestor

10. Why is the exact translation of some traditional Māori place names sometimes debated, even among fluent speakers?

Because place names are re-invented every yearBecause some names were composed generations ago, and their original context or wordplay is not always fully recordedBecause there is only ever one possible meaning for any nameBecause Māori place names have no fixed spelling at all

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